A staple of Henderson’s annual conference and tradeshow calendar, the 2023 edition of the NAB Show marked the event’s centennial celebration. As in years past, attendees learned about the latest in systems design and technology and were able to meet with manufacturers and vendors, view demonstrations, and attend presentations from industry experts. Kevin Butler, Aaron Johnson, and Jason Kartak, three members of #TeamHenderson’s venue sector, attended the conference in Las Vegas this year. They brought back some key insights on manufacturers’ continued focus on software updates for existing equipment as they continue to work through supply chain issues.

Software Encoding Advancements

• SMPTE 2110: Advancements of audio and video traffic utilizing the protocol including the addition of native protocol from cameras.
• NDI Refinement: Further adoption of NDI streaming endpoints and ingest into video workflows.
• Additional SRT Transportation: Greater acceptance for streaming and remote production applications.
• Better Compression and Color Dynamics: Better algorithms provide improved picture quality at smaller bandwidth needs.
• Improvements to Accommodate Virtual Sets: Enhancements in creating virtual sets and managing and moving objects within a virtual environment utilizing Unreal Engine.
• Software as a Component of Production: While software-based production has been around for many years, this year’s NAB seemed to showcase more acceptance of interfacing with production systems via these applications.

Continued adoption of cloud-based workflow

With the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic still being felt, remote workflow for AV production has seen a tremendous increase in acceptance. This has provided opportunities to improve access to large amounts of data by utilizing the cloud for hosting applications, audio, and video files. Access via web interfaces or light desktop applications has increased performance and available features while minimizing hardware requirements, local power consumption, and storage needs. Some manufacturers showcased new cloud-hosted applications for creating, managing, and using their products.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) had a prominent presence at the show. Many of the independent vendors are working with AWS for hosting their cloud-based services. This could be viewed as an increase in market share over competitors.

Enhancements in fiber connectivity

Cable manufacturers continue to add and refine multi-channel fiber optic offerings for both SMPTE cable and single-mode cable. Many manufacturers showed new offerings in direct burial/riser and tactile grade cables.

Fiberoptic transport options from manufacturers to move AV signals have been increasing over the years. Multiple offerings for this service were promoted at this NAB, from simple, single-channel movement to massive multi-channel AV field onramp and offramp points. The show capitalized on many manufacturers’ capabilities of fiberoptic transportation in meeting a plethora of market segments and cost-effective solutions.

As bandwidth usage continues to grow for AV signals, it has increased the need for fiberoptic connectivity throughout facilities. This was once considered to be an expensive approach to cable infrastructure within facilities. But with advancements in glass technology and termination capabilities in the field, the cost has significantly dropped over the years and now has shifted to being a standard implementation. Many manufacturers showed additional cost-effective improvements in field termination capabilities and testing equipment. With the trends we are seeing in fiberoptic connectivity versus the cost difference between a standard category backbone, the cost gap is quickly closing. We see fiberoptic cabling becoming the standard backbone of most projects within the next few years.

There was once a time when we were excited to have 1G as an industry standard cable backbone and could not contemplate it ever not being enough. The time has come where 1G cable infrastructure is no longer capable of meeting all needs for a project given ongoing advancements in video technology and increasing demand for higher resolutions with wider color spectrums. Over the last few years, the industry has been increasing its usage of 10G backbones. This was very evident throughout the show with almost all manufactures now offering 10G capabilities. We see this as something to keep a close watch on as 10G may become the standard backbone for facilities way quicker than we all expected.

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